


And now good-morrow to our aching souls

by EstellaB



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Platonic Bedsharing, Post-Episode: s01e06 FZZT, happy season 1 science besties, it is fitzsimmons after all, just dealing with normal problems, like nightmares and feelings, maybe non-sexual bedsharing would be a better way to put it, missing moment, not space rocks or evil androids or the apocalypse, they are both on the cusp of a realisation and YET, well not completely platonic, well not happy exactly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:40:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27697069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EstellaB/pseuds/EstellaB
Summary: FitzSimmons deal with the fallout of the Chitauri virus.
Relationships: Leo Fitz & Jemma Simmons, Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons
Comments: 10
Kudos: 21





	And now good-morrow to our aching souls

**Author's Note:**

> I recognise that the world does not need another post-FZZT fic. I wrote one anyway because I am in the middle of season 5 and I know something bad is going to happen in the next episode, so I wanted to see my lovely season 1 science besties being awkward and gentle with each other.

“And the brilliant thing is,” Simmons continued, excitedly, “that I think I might actually be able to harness the adrenal glands and get them to deliver – Fitz?” It had occurred to her that she’d been talking on for quite a while without any of Fitz’s customary interruptions. She turned around, expecting him to be at her shoulder, only to find him sitting slumped at his bench, head propped up in his hands and eyes almost completely closed. “Fitz?” she repeated more loudly, and he jumped.

“Sorry, Simmons, just… run that last bit by me again?”

She laughed. “I think that’s our cue that we should be done for the day.” Squeezing Fitz’s shoulder, she began to clear up her things. “Pasta alright for dinner? I’ll get it going in a minute.”

He rubbed his eyes and didn’t protest, slowly beginning to put away his own equipment. “Mind if I have a bit of a lie in tomorrow, Simmons? You don’t really need me for this part and I’m all in.”

“Of course, but – is everything all right? You’ve been tired for days,” Simmons said, suddenly concerned. She remembered the three cups of tea Fitz had polished off during breakfast day before, the dark circles under his eyes, the way he’d skipped their last film night to turn in early. “Are you coming down with something?” She held the back of her hand up to his forehead and he flushed a bit, but his skin was cool to the touch. As she caught his wrist in her other hand and put two fingers over his radial pulse, he shook her off and shuffled backwards.

“I’m not sick, Simmons. Just having trouble sleeping the last few nights.”

“Well, but that could be a symptom. Have you been experiencing any other changes to your normal health? Anything like alterations in appetite, feeling down or depressed, dizziness, changes to your stool - ”

“ _Simmons_ ,” he said, sounding frustrated. “It’s nothing like that. I’m not sick. I just…” He sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’ve been having a few bad dreams lately, that’s all. I’ll get through it.” His cheeks were pink with embarrassment. Simmons’ heart broke a little bit. They’d all been through a lot, and it was perfectly natural to have nightmares sometimes.

“There has been a lot going on recently.” She kept her tone intentionally light. “I’m not surprised you’re not sleeping - I’m sure we’ve all had some bad nights. Was it after your mission with Ward? Really it was quite dangerous, after all. Or that incident with the - ”

“You nearly died,” he interrupted. His eyes flew open at his own abruptness, and he buried his face in his hands for a long moment. Eventually he looked up, though he was staring fixedly at a point over her shoulder and wouldn’t meet her eyes. When he spoke again, his voice was low. “I keep dreaming about you falling.”

Simmons felt like all the air had rushed out of her lungs. Fitz screaming silently through the glass doors of the lab – suddenly the memory rose like bile in her throat and she thought she was going to be sick. She tried to imagine what it would have been like to have their situations reversed – to see Fitz jump to his death while she was locked impotently in the lab – but her brain simply refused to process it. After she’d taken a couple of deep breaths, she felt like she could speak again. “I’m sorry.” Her voice cracked halfway through, and she cleared her throat. “I’m sorry,” she repeated, more firmly. “Is it every night?”

“No,” he answered quickly. “Just… it’s hard to get back to sleep when it does. And hard to fall asleep in the first place. Knowing.”

“Well,” Simmons said, now using her _I can’t believe this hasn’t occurred to you_ voice. “Why don’t you just… come and see me when it happens? I’m only down the corridor. That way, you’ll see that I’m fine and you’ll be able to get straight back off.”

“Don’t be absurd, Simmons, it’s normally sparrow’s fart - ”

“How about this, then? I’ll leave my door unlocked and unlatched overnight. If you want to check on me, just push it open a crack – you know I sleep like the dead - ” (she immediately wished she hadn’t used that turn of phrase, because Fitz’s whole face had drained of colour, but she ploughed on) “ – then you’ll see that I’m fine and you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“I don’t want to disturb - ”

“You won’t. I told you. I’ll just - ”

“And you shouldn’t leave your door unlocked at night. Who knows what could - ”

“I trust everyone on our team, Fitz,” Simmons assured him. “Even when we have dangerous, er, passengers, they tend to be locked up pretty securely.”

“You still shouldn’t - ”

“My sleeping arrangements are my decision, actually, so that’s what I’ll be doing from now on. Make use of it or not – that’s your decision. End of discussion.”

Fitz took a deep, shaky breath, and nodded. “So,” he began determinedly, in what she thought was his best attempt at a normal voice. “Pasta for dinner?”

Simmons smiled at him as she put the last of her things away. “Carbonara or spag bol?” she asked, and the tension of the last few minutes melted away. It was just as it had always been between them.

\--

He didn’t take her up on the offer to start with – at least, not as far as she could tell. Maybe she was sleeping through it as promised. However, four nights after their conversation, she stirred awake in the small hours. Initially, she felt foggy and confused, but as she came to a little more, she realised she’d heard her door creaking open and remembered her agreement with Fitz. Carefully, she held still, not opening her eyes, trying to keep her breathing in a quiet, steady rhythm, and before she knew it he was gone again. After that, he came every few nights, standing and looking at her for just a handful of seconds, before gently pulling the door to and padding away to his own bunk. Even though she always woke up, she’d never struggled with insomnia, so it wasn’t difficult to get back to sleep. It was a strange addition to their friendship, but their relationship had always been iterative – rivals, lab partners, friends, best friends, flatmates – so it flexed once again to incorporate this new situation. Every time she tried to imagine what he was going through, tried to picture him falling from the plane, her brain generated the same _404: page not found_ error it had during their initial conversation. And their relationship didn’t change during the day – he called her Jemma sometimes now, but other than that everything was much as it had been before. She simply assumed that, once he’d had some processing time, he’d stop having the dreams, or at least start believing that she was really safe once he woke up from them.

A month into their new arrangement, Simmons was starting to worry that she hadn’t made the best decision. Fitz was still coming just as often as he had to start with, which meant that he wasn’t sleeping, which in turn meant that perhaps he wasn’t dealing with it very well. He seemed a bit better rested, at least, so presumably he was managing to get back to sleep after – but she was still concerned. Maybe he needed something more than time – maybe he actually needed to talk to someone about everything that had happened. Fitz had broken quarantine, risked death, been ready to jump out of a plane to save her. It was a lot to be getting on with. She was still trying to work out a way to bring it up naturally, without giving away the fact that he had been waking her up, when the pattern changed.

To start with, it seemed like any other night – she woke up when the door opened, and laid as still as she could – but this time she heard an audible sniff, and the door didn’t close straight away. Simmons considered. He’d definitely been there longer than normal, and she decided that if he could change the rules, she could too. She faked a yawn, and opened her eyes sleepily.

“Fitz?” she mumbled, but whatever else she had been intending to say flew out of her brain when she saw him. Even in the half-light streaming in from the corridor, she could see that his eyes were red, and there were remnants of tears on his cheeks. This was new. At least, she hoped it was. “Fitz, what’s - ”

“Sorry! Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you, I’ll just - ” He began to step away from her room, obviously mortified, when Simmons sat up.

“Fitz,” she said, trying to keep her voice at an appropriate decibel for the hour, but also extremely concerned. “Fitz, come in and close the door.”

He did as she asked, seemingly on autopilot, but once he was in the room he hovered right by the door, visibly uncomfortable.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, just – you did say I could come and check – I just – it was an especially bad - ” he broke off and rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m sorry I woke you, I’ll just-”

Simmons pulled her legs up to her chest, and twisted so she was facing him more directly. She patted the patch of bunk next to her, and wordlessly he came to sit down. They were quiet for a couple of moments while she readjusted her quilt, getting it arranged over her legs and his. She found his hand in the dark and laid her own over it. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not at all,” he replied with a shudder. “Only it was just… worse than usual, that’s all.”

“Do you want to talk about something else?”

He thought about this for a moment, but shook his head. “Now that I’m awake, I feel ridiculous. But Simmons, if you could – I mean – it’s so real when it’s happening, that’s all. And then it’s so hard to believe that it… isn’t, once I wake up. I mean I feel a right git, Jemma, you’re the one who actually – and I’m the one who can’t - ”

“I think it might have been worse for you, actually,” she whispered, finally acknowledging what had been at the back of her mind for a month. “I can’t – I’ve tried to imagine what it would be like – if it had been the other way around, and you had - and I just, I can’t – my brain won’t do it. Think I’d still be having nightmares too.”

Fitz looked over at her, eyes very wide in the gloom. “Well, we wouldn’t have had the problem in the first place, would we?” he joked weakly, nudging her with his shoulder. “I’ve got much more common sense than you. I’d never have knocked you out. I wouldn’t have heard the end of it.”

“I _thought_ ,” Simmons grumbled, without much rancour, “that I was _saving your life_.”

They sat there in silence for a few more minutes, both of them remembering how that day had felt. After a bit, Simmons suppressed a yawn – real this time - and Fitz started. “Sorry, sorry. It’s the middle of the night, I’ll just be - ”

She cut him off by handing him one of her pillows. “It _is_ the middle of the night. Kip in here if the dream was that bad – it might help. Honestly, Fitz, I’m wiped, you won’t keep me up.”

“But we can’t-” he squeaked, and she rolled her eyes.

“Top and tail, if you’d rather. We did it sometimes at the academy, remember? I won’t bite.”

With a very melodramatic sigh of reluctance, Fitz put the pillow down at the foot of her bed. There were a few awkward moments of rearranging limbs and complaints about cold feet, but soon they were as comfortable as two reasonably small people in one very small bunk could be.

Simmons looked over at the shadowy form at the other end of her bed and smiled at him, though she had no idea if he could see in the semi-darkness. “Goodnight, Fitz,” she murmured, and closed her eyes.

\--

Simmons woke up to the sound of her alarm chirping across the room. She stretched as she normally did – or at least, she tried to – only to discover that there was a heavy weight on her shoulder and something poking her face. Opening her eyes, she focused through her early-morning bleariness and discovered that there was a foot on her pillow, toes bumping against her cheek. All of a sudden, the events of last night came back to her and she realised with a start just who the foot was attached to. 

“Fitz!” she hissed. She tried to push his leg off of her shoulder, but he was heavy with sleep and extremely uncooperative.

“S’loud,” he mumbled, head half hidden in the crook of his arm.

“Yes,” she agreed, “and it _will_ be loud until you _move your foot_ and let me turn it off.”

At that, he sat bolt upright – kicking her in the process, though she supposed that was unintentional – and hastily removed his wayward limbs. “Simmons!”

“Good morning,” she said brightly, feeling much more cheerful now that she wasn’t pinned against her pillow. 

He stared at her as she got up, rolling her shoulders and feeling vaguely self-conscious in her camisole and shorts. It hadn’t mattered in the dark last night, and Fitz had certainly seen these pyjamas when they were housemates at Sci-Ops, but today she felt a bit too exposed for some reason. She pulled on her dressing gown before shutting off the alarm, though it wasn’t really cold enough. “I’m in your bed,” he observed, rather dazedly.

“Yes, you are,” she confirmed, not quite hiding her smile at his sleepy early-morning confusion. “Did you sleep all right in the end?”

“Did – yes – slept.” He rubbed a hand over his face, looking a bit bemused. “You?”

“I slept very well,” she replied, surprised to realise it was true despite his toes being practically up her nose when she awoke. “And you didn’t… no more dreams?”

Curiously, Fitz went very red and then quite pale, and coughed a couple of times. “Nope, no nightmares. Thanks, Simmons, I…” he trailed off.

She patted his ankle through the covers, before picking up her towel and toiletries. “I’m going to go and shower. Early bird gets the hot water and all that. See you at breakfast.”

\--

Fitz was a bit jumpy to start with in the lab that morning, but once they’d settled into their day he seemed to have got over whatever embarrassment was lingering from his nightmare. Back to business as usual. At half-past ten, Simmons declared break time. They sat there quietly for a few moments, enjoying their tea and the chocolate hobnobs that Fitz’ mum had put in his most recent parcel from home.

“Simmons,” Fitz said, after a while. “Simmons, I really am sorry that I disturbed you last night. You don’t have to - ”

“Nonsense.” She leant a little closer to him and squeezed his arm. “Remember when we went into the field together? We said we’d have each other’s backs if anything bad happened, just like we always have. Well, something bad did happen. And now we have each other’s backs. Simple as that, really.”

He gazed at her for a moment, something serious and unfamiliar in his eyes (had they always been that blue?), clearly trying to say something but unable to find the words. “Thanks, Jemma.”

“Fitz,” she started, ignoring the sudden (and inexplicable) swooping sensation in her abdomen. “Fitz, you know I wouldn’t want to be sleeping while you were going through something terrible. Please promise you’ll always come and wake me up so we can get through it together.”

He was obviously reluctant, but Simmons was nothing if not stubborn and she fixed him with her best piercing expression until he agreed. “Promise. And the same to you.”

“Promise. Right. Well. Nearly time for the big _Who_ anniversary special,” she said, cross with herself for feeling flustered. “Have you seen that Billie Piper’s coming back? But she isn’t playing Rose? What do you think that’s all about?”

And just like that, they were happily swapping theories back and forth as if nothing had ever happened. The unsettling new feeling flooding through her had gone back to wherever it had come from, and everything was right in her world.

**Author's Note:**

> Fitz and Simmons are probably not sitting around reading John Donne to each other (definitely not Simmons and probably not Fitz), but I couldn't resist stealing from The Good-Morrow for the title. Truly, if ever any couple deserves to turn their backs on a terrifying world and just wrap themselves up in each other for a while, it's them.


End file.
